The continued proliferation of RF communication systems presents opportunities to improve communications among various groups, particularly public safety agencies. For example, with improved communications, coordination of emergency response efforts by different public safety agencies can be improved. In addition, time delays in emergency response services, which often occur due to poor communication among the public safety agencies, can be mitigated.
Notwithstanding, different agencies commonly use communication systems that are incompatible with one another. For example, a local police department may communicate using a particular communication service that is different than communication services being used by state and federal agencies. In this example, it would be desirable to deploy a public safety wide area network (WAN) to support communications among local, state and federal public safety agencies, while ensuring compatibility with existing communication infrastructure. Moreover, use of the public safety WAN should not be overly cumbersome to those that will be using the WAN. Thus, it would be desirable to facilitate interoperability among communication systems that use a shared network.